During the World Series a new ad spot for Avatar popped up on television, and I think if this had been the first thing people saw for the film they would have been all over it. Because this is a spot cut to look like an ad for Terminator 2 or Aliens. It’s all killer, no filler — power suits, alien beasts, combat, angry men and plenty of big blue cats, but none of their feelings. Check it out after the break.

This comes on the heels of a report that says the full-length theatrical trailer boosted Avatar‘s online views by 418%. Which is a confusing number, as reported by Variety, that doesn’t really tell us much about whether more people really know more about the film now. But it does suggest that the whole Avatar Day thing was really a big waste of money, which a lot of us had already suspected, having attended half-full ‘screenings’.

So, after all the noise about needing a new way to sell this movie, it’s the regular old theatrical trailer that starts to change awareness of the film. And now this TV spot can’t hurt, because it is so simple, so stripped down, and possibly so tailored to skirt around all the romantic angles of the movie. It’s ironic that this is probably the most mainstream bit of promotion that Fox has come up with yet for the film, given that the romance is what kept people coming back to Titanic. I’m quite curious to see how people respond to the film in December; Titanic might have just been exactly the right thing and the right time to capture a phenomenal audience.

Also, under the TV spot embed, we’ve got the international Avatar trailer and the very silly little Coke Zero commercial that has a bit of new footage. Excepting all the CGI-heavy effects, the Coke commercial looks like it was made around the time Cameron last directed a non-documentary feature film. So it’s fairly amusing in that sense, but not much use otherwise.